How far Chaucer was in sympathy with the Lollards it is difficult to say. His works contain but the barest reference to their existence, and the fact that the Host accuses the Parson of Lollardy, and that the Shipman expresses a pious horror of heresy, cannot be said to prove anything either way. It may be intended as a carefully concealed compliment to the influence of Wycliff, or, as seems more probable, it may simply be a chance reference in keeping with the spirit of the times. That the Shipman should be so terrified lest the saintly Parson should
... springen cokkel in our clene corn,[171]
that he feels impelled to break into his threatened sermon with the story of the merchant’s wife and the monk, is a subtle enough piece of satire, but whether Chaucer so intended it, or whether it is one of the happy accidents of genius, we have no means of knowing. The Parson is a devout Catholic, the Monk, with all his faults, is at worst but a forerunner of the fox-hunting squarson of later days, with all the geniality and good-fellowship of his race. If Chaucer attacks the clergy, it is only for those things which the best Churchmen of the day were denouncing with less wit but no less bitterness. Saints are rare at the best of times, and Chaucer, whose mission is to paint life as he finds it, gives good measure when he allows the Parson and the Plowman to form two of his nine-and-twenty pilgrims.
Few things, indeed, are more striking in Chaucer than the manner in which he combines caustic observation of the weaknesses and hypocrisies of men, with innate reverence for all that is pure and noble. That the same man should enjoy the coarse humour of the Friar and the Reve, and yet treat womanhood and childhood with such tender reverence, is one of the mysteries of human nature. Prof. Ten Brink, as has been said, believes that Chaucer passed through a phase of intense religious feeling. “A worldling has to reproach himself with all sorts of things,” he writes, “especially when he lives at a court like that of Edward III and is intimate with a John of Gaunt. Chaucer ... naturally seeks in religion the power for self-conquest and improvement. He was a faithful son of the Church, even though he had his own opinions about many things.... He was specially attracted by the eternal-womanly element in this system, which finds its purest realisation in the person of the Virgin Mother Mary. In moments when life seemed hard and weary, and when he was unable to arouse and cheer himself with philosophy and poetry, he gladly turned for help and consolation to the Virgin Mother.” Certainly his poetry is never sweeter or more dignified than when he is addressing this “haven of refut,” this
... salvacioun
Of hem that been in sorwe and in distresse.
Nothing better illustrates the simplicity and sincerity of Chaucer’s religious feeling, than the tale of little St. Hugh. The story of the Christian child decoyed away and murdered by the Jews was commonly believed in the Middle Ages. Indeed, it is said that more than one anti-Semitic outbreak in Russia during the past forty years has been provoked by the relation of similar tales, and we have just seen the conclusion of a “Blood-ritual” case of the kind. The fierce racial and religious hatred which underlies belief in the possibility of such a thing, is in itself sufficiently terrible, and the story affords ample opportunity for the expression of animosity towards these
... cursed folk of Herodes al newe,
but Chaucer’s religion would appear to consist less in the denunciation of the Church’s enemies, than in affection for her saints. Dramatic justice is meted out to the murderers, but the poet takes no delight in dwelling on their dying agonies, or heaping abuse upon their memory. The point of the tale lies, not in the wickedness of the Jews, but in the simple, childish innocence and piety of Hugh, and the manner in which “Cristes moder” deigns to honour the service of this
... litel clergeon[172] of seven yeer of age.
The opening invocation is one of the most beautiful of all Chaucer’s addresses to the Virgin:—
Lady! thy bountee, thy magnificence,
Thy vertu, and thy grete humilitee
Ther may no tonge expresse in no science;
For som-tyme, lady, er men praye to thee,
Thou goost biforn, of thy benignitee,
And getest us the light, thurgh thy preyers,
To gyden us un-to thy sone so dere.
From beginning to end the limpid simplicity of the poem is marred by no unnecessary word. The picture of the little boy doing his diligence to learn the Alma redemptoris, although
Noght wiste he what this Latin was to seye
For he so yong and tendre was of age,
and going to his school-fellow to have it explained, is absolutely natural. So is the school-fellow’s hasty summary of the hymn, ending with
“I can no more expounde in this matere;
I lerne song, I can[173] but smal grammere.”
Chaucer does not, like so many hagiographers, forget the child in the saint. The prevailing note throughout is one of happy childhood. The tragedy is kept in the background. We catch a glimpse of the cruel steel as the Jews cut the boy’s throat: we see the white-faced mother hastening from place to place in search of him; but our thoughts are with St. Hugh and the gracious Queen of Heaven who comes to aid him:—
And in a tombe of marbul-stones clere
Enclosen they his litel body swete;
Ther he is now, god leve us for to mete.[174]
There is no tendency to over-elaborate the miracle or to explain it away. Chaucer accepts the fact quietly and without comment, as he accepts the miracles in the Man of Lawes Tale. In the story of Constance, indeed, it would seem as if some momentary doubt of its possibility flashed across his mind, for he goes out of his way to defend the miraculous element, but the defence itself is one of simple acceptance of facts related in the Bible, and shows none of that intellectual questioning which sometimes manifests itself in his poetry:—
Men mighte asken why she was nat slayn?
Eek at the feste who mighte hir body save?
And I answere to that demaunde agayn,
Who saved Daniel in the horrible cave,
Ther every wight save he, maister and knave
Was with the leoun fret er he asterte?[175]
No wight but god, that he bar in his herte.
······
Now, sith she was not at the feste y-slawe,[176]
Who kepte hir fro drenching[177] in the see?
Who kepte Jonas in the fisshes mawe
Til he was spouted up at Ninivee?...
······
It is obvious that Catholicism appeals to his emotions, and that the shortcomings of unworthy priests no more affect his pleasure in the tender beauty of its point of view, than the moral errors of a Benvenuto Cellini affect our pleasure in his craftsmanship. The poet’s soul responded to the poetry of worship, a poetry which underlies all forms and ceremonies, which no unworthiness on the part of the officiant can wholly obliterate, no superstition render wholly absurd. He recognises and rebukes the hypocrisy of many who minister in the name of Holy Church, but he is quick to separate wanton friar and idle priest from the religion whose dignity they profane. The fact that religion lies in the spirit rather than the observance is very clearly stated in the Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 6225-94.
As has been said, it is on the emotional side that Catholicism appeals to him. Intellectually he finds many difficulties, and more than once his poetry shows a tinge of scepticism which might well have brought him into serious difficulties had his patron been a man less powerful and less inclined to tolerate heretical sympathies than John of Gaunt. Again and again Chaucer comes to the edge of an abyss, and, after one glance into the depths, turns away with a shrug of the shoulders and a half-whimsical, half-satirical smile on his lips. Does God ordain man’s life for him, from beginning to end, and has he no choice or freedom of action left him? Chaucer plays with the question, turns it over, makes it a trifle ridiculous by applying it to the death of a cock, and then, as we have seen, tosses it aside with
I wol not han to do of swich matere;
&
nbsp; The long disquisition on the subject—chiefly taken from his favourite philosopher, Boëthius—which he puts into the mouth of Troilus (Troilus and Criseyde, Book IV, stanzas 137-154) proves nothing, except Chaucer’s interest in the subject, which leads him to translate and insert so long a passage, and the natural inclination to fatalism of Troilus himself.
The Prologue to the Legend of Good Women begins with a characteristic shelving of an important question:—
A thousand tymes have I herd men telle,
That ther is joye in heven and peyne in helle;
And I accorde wel that hit is so;
But natheles, yit wot I wel also,
That ther nis noon dwelling in this contree,
That either hath in heven or helle y-be,
Ne may of hit non other weyes witen
But as he hath herd seyd, or founde it writen
True, the poet goes on to protest the absurdity of refusing credence to everything that we cannot see with our own eyes, but involuntarily we find ourselves recalling his refusal to commit himself as to the probable fate of Arcite’s soul, and the fact that Arcite, although a hero, was a heathen, does not seem entirely to account for it.
This tendency to dwell upon insoluble problems manifests itself also in the strange attraction that dreams have for Chaucer. He is not content simply to use the conventional dream setting for his poems. He is continually harking back to the question: Do dreams contain some mysterious warning by which men may escape a threatened fate? In the Nonnes Prestes Tale the subject is treated satirically. Pertelote’s arguments against belief in dreams are excellent, and most convincing. All sensible people must share her opinion that Chauntecleer is probably suffering from indigestion. Yet—the dream comes true. Only the fact that the whole story takes place in the hen-yard makes it impossible to take it seriously. But in Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer deliberately interpolates three, quite unnecessary, stanzas in Book V, in which he discusses whence dreams spring:—
For prestes of the temple tellen this,
That dremes been the revelaciouns
Of goddes, and as wel they telle, y-wis,
That they ben infernals illusiouns;
And leches[178] seyn, that of complexiouns[179]
Proceden they, or fast, or glotonye,[180]
Who woot in sooth thus what they signifye?...
Again in the opening lines of the Hous of Fame he asks the same question:—
God turn us every dreem to gode!
For hit is wonder, by the rode,
To my wit, what causeth swevenes[181]
Either on morwes, or on evenes;
And why th’ effect folweth of somme,
And of somme hit shal never come....
and again, characteristically, refuses to give any opinion on the matter—
For I of noon opinioun
Nil as now make mencioun.
But if Chaucer is chary of committing himself on speculative matters such as these, with regard to practical morality he has no such hesitation. It was the fashion of the day to draw a moral from the most unlikely stories, and Chaucer, while he never forces an application after the manner of Gower or the compiler of the Gesta Romanorum, is sufficiently in sympathy with the spirit of his age to conform to the practice when opportunity occurs. The Somnour, who, by the way, has just had a violent quarrel with the Friar, preaches an admirable homily against Ire, illustrating it, after the most approved method, with an apt anecdote. The Pardoner, as we have seen, inveighs against drunkenness, as does Chaucer himself in the Man of Lawes Tale. The simple statement of Averagus—
Southe is the hyeste thing that man may kepe—
is a sermon in itself, and the Maunciple ends his distinctly unmoral tale with some excellent advice of his dame’s:—
My sone, keep wel thy tonge, and keep thy freend,
A wikked tonge is worse than a fend[182]
My sone, god of his endelees goodnesse
Walled a tonge with teeth and lippes eek,
For man sholde him avyse what he speke....
It would be possible to multiply instances almost indefinitely. Perhaps the most striking of all is the sudden, unexpected moral application which ends Troilus and Criseyde. We have followed the passion and sins of the lovers, we have wept with Troilus and forgiven Cressida in spite of ourselves, and all at once, while our minds are still tuned to the rapture and sweetness of a love-story, Chaucer turns to bid us note the end of life and love:—
O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she,
In which that love up groweth with your age,
Repeyreth hoom from worldly vanitee,
And of your herte up-casteth the visage
To thilke god that after his image
Yow made, and thinketh al nis but a fayre
This world, that passeth sone as floures fayre.
And loveth him, the which that right for love
Upon a cros, our soules for to beye
First starf, and roos,[183] and sit in heven a-bove;
For he nil falsen no wight, dar I seye,
That wol his herte al hoolly[184] on him leye.
And sin he best to love is, and most meke,
What nedeth feyned loves for to seke?
In politics, as in religion, Chaucer shows himself keenly alive to the evils and abuses of the day, and yet no partisan. The author of Piers Plowman has left us a picture of the bitter poverty of the peasant class. The complaint of Peace against Wrong (Passus 4), shows how he has carried off his wife and stolen both geese and grys (pigs):—
He maynteneth his men to murthere myne hewen,[185]
Forstalleth my feires,[186] and fighteth in my chepyng,[187]
And breketh up my bernes dore[188] and bereth awey my whete
········
I am noght hardy for hym unethe to loke;[189]
and how completely the poor were at the mercy of the rich. When a peasant died, his lord had a right to his best possession, and if he owned not less than three cows, the parson of the parish took the next best, a condition of things against which we find Sir David Lyndsay protesting, as late as 1560, in his Satyre of the Three Estaats. John Ball, “the mad priest of Kent,” for twenty years combined the preaching of Lollardy with that of a kind of rough socialism, and the rude rhyme which contained the kernel of his teaching—
When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?—
went the round of the Midlands and helped to fan the flame of discontent which finally broke into the wide-spread conflagration of the Peasants’ Revolt. It was a time when new ideals were slowly struggling to find expression, and the old order of feudalism was passing away for ever. But while the nobles were divided by factions among themselves, and the poor beat bleeding hands against the prison walls that hemmed them in, the middle class was steadily increasing in wealth and prosperity, and it is with this class that Chaucer chiefly concerns himself. The majority of the Canterbury pilgrims are prosperous, well-to-do tradesmen and artisans:—
Hir knyves were y-chaped[190] noght with bras
But al with silver, wroght ful clene and well,
Hir girdles and hir pouches every-deel.
Wel semed ech of hem a fair burgeys
To sitten in a yeldhall[191] on a deys.[192]
Everich, for the wisdom that he can,
Was shaply[193] for to been an alderman.
For catel hadde they y-nogh and rente,
And eek hir wyves wolde it wel assente;
And elles certain were they to blame.
It is ful fair to been y-clept “ma dame,”
And goon to vigilyes[194] al bifore,
And have a mantel royalliche y-bore.
This is something very different from Langland’s[195] picture of Dawe the dykere dying of hunger, or the poor farmer dining on bean-bread and bran. Even the Plowman seems fairly well off:—
His tythes payed he ful faire and wel,
Bothe of his propre swink
[196] and his catel,
and the general impression is one of comfort, which even rises to a certain mild luxury. The pilgrims are well fed and well clothed, they have horses to ride, and can afford to call at the ale-house as they pass. They fill the air with the sound of laughter and song as they ride, and we can well understand the Lollard Thorpe’s complaint (made more than ten years after Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales) that, “What with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their piping, and with the jangling of their Canterburie bells, and with the barking out of dogges after them ... they (i. e. pilgrims) make more noise than if the king came there away with all his clarions and many other minstrels” (Wycliff’s Works, ed. Arnold, I. 83). Even in the tales themselves little hint is given of the darker side of the picture. We get a glimpse of the relation between lord and vassal, in the Clerkes Tale, but no comment is made on it. Griselda is carrying her water-pot back from the well, when she hears the marquis calling her:—
And she set doun her water-pot anoon
Bisyde the threshfold, in an oxes stalle,
And doun up-on hir knees she gan to falle,
And with sad contenance kneleth stille
Til she had herd what was the lordes wille.
Apparently there is nothing in this incident to attract the attention of a fourteenth-century poet. It is quite natural to kneel on the floor of the cow-shed when your lord honours you by seeking you there and giving his commands in person.
That Chaucer has no very high opinion of the intelligence or reliability of a mob is shown, not only by his sketches of crowds, but by such passages as that in the Clerkes Tale where he breaks off the story to apostrophise the people:—
O stormy peple! unsad[197] and ever untrewe
As undiscreet and chaunging as a vane,
Delyting ever in rumbel that is newe,
For lyk the mone ay wexe ye and wane;
A ful of clapping,[198] dere y-nogh a jane[199]
Chaucer and His Times Page 13